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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

NBC News reports: Before he was sent to an infamous supermax prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, Andry Hernandez Romero was waiting for an immigration judge to decide whether he would be granted asylum in the United States. And even after his deportation, Hernandez’s lawyers fought to keep his asylum claim open as a way of ensuring he didn’t disappear from the American legal system. But an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim on…

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Israeli former prime minister: ‘What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination’

Israeli former prime minister: ‘What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination’

HuffPost reports: Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he now believes his country’s relentless assault on the Palestinian people amounts to “war crimes” and must be stopped. Addressing the people of Israel in an article written in Hebrew and published by Haaretz on Thursday, Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, condemned current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for “waging a pointless war, without a clear goal or plan, and with no chance of success,” according to…

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Georgetown scholar was ‘chained, shackled’ in ICE detention

Georgetown scholar was ‘chained, shackled’ in ICE detention

  In their first broadcast interview since his release from ICE detention, Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri and his wife, Mapheze Saleh, spoke to PBS News’ Laura Barrón-López about Khan Suri’s recent release after nearly two months in a detention facility in Texas. The Trump administration accused Suri of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”– an accusation he denies. “One should, at this time, show courage, because courage is also contagious. We need to break the cycle…

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Israel ‘killing babies as a hobby’ in Gaza, says Democrats party leader, an IDF reserve major general

Israel ‘killing babies as a hobby’ in Gaza, says Democrats party leader, an IDF reserve major general

The Times of Israel reports: Left-wing politician Yair Golan faced a wave of backlash on Tuesday from across the political spectrum after he accused Israel of killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby.” Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the The Democrats party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, said in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster that “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if…

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The Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist effort that claims to combat antisemitism

The Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist effort that claims to combat antisemitism

The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, created by the Heritage Foundation and spearheading Project Esther, is a group dominated by right-wing Christians. The ongoing assault by the Trump regime targeting Harvard University, along with other colleges and universities across America is at the core of NTFCA’s mission. Shortly before the November presidential election, Religion Dispatches reported: Following a time-honored Israel advocacy tradition, Project Esther frames its McCarthyist crusade as an effort to ensure the safety of Jews. But as Jewish Insider reported,…

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Netanyahu accused of slander after criticising Macron, Carney and Starmer

Netanyahu accused of slander after criticising Macron, Carney and Starmer

The Guardian reports: Benjamin Netanyahu was accused of slander and pursuing a war without end after he claimed the leaders of France, Canada and the UK were stoking antisemitism and siding with Hamas by demanding he end the two-month blockade of food and aid into Gaza. In what has become an extraordinary standoff with some of Israel’s closest allies, Netanyahu appeared to deliberately raise the stakes on Thursday night by accusing his western critics of abandoning Israel in a war…

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As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

The Guardian reports: As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive. Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian…

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen: The U.S. is ‘complicit’ in starving the people of Gaza

Sen. Chris Van Hollen: The U.S. is ‘complicit’ in starving the people of Gaza

Rolling Stone reports: The vast majority of people in Gaza — 93 percent — are facing crisis levels of food insecurity, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen said that the United States is “complicit” in their hunger. When asked on CBS’s Face the Nation about photographs of starving children in Gaza, Van Hollen said, “It’s very hard to look at those pictures. And the United States has been complicit. President Trump was in the region and really did nothing, said virtually…

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Actors and filmmakers condemn film industry’s silence ‘while genocide is taking place in Gaza’

Actors and filmmakers condemn film industry’s silence ‘while genocide is taking place in Gaza’

Variety reports: Joaquin Phoenix, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Pascal, Riz Ahmed and Guillermo del Toro are among a group of figures to have added their names to a letter condemning the film industry for its “silence” over the ongoing and deadly impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The letter, published on the first day of Cannes and initially signed by more than 370 actors and filmmakers, also condemned Israel’s killing of Fatma Hassona, the protagonist of festival-bound doc “Put Your…

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My family experienced apartheid. I know Afrikaners aren’t refugees

My family experienced apartheid. I know Afrikaners aren’t refugees

The Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu writes: The combination of the Trump administration granting expedited refugee status to white South Africans and the Episcopal Church ending a 40-year partnership with the federal government rather than help resettle fake refugees leaves me with contradictory feelings. As an Episcopal priest and a dual citizen of the United States and South Africa, I am proud of the Episcopal Church for standing up and speaking out about the U.S. government’s lies of a white “genocide”…

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Ethnic cleansing: Trump administration plans to permanently transfer one million Palestinians to Libya

Ethnic cleansing: Trump administration plans to permanently transfer one million Palestinians to Libya

NBC News reports: The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News. The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said. In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions…

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U.S. aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage

U.S. aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage

Reuters reports: Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid…

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AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

Adi Robertson writes: Mark Zuckerberg wants you to be understood by the machine. The Meta CEO has recently been pitching a future where his AI tools give people something that “knows them well,” not just as pals, but as professional help. “For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist,” he told Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, “I think everyone will have an AI.” The jury is out on whether AI systems can make good therapists, but this future is already…

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Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

The New York Times reports: Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave. For months, Israel has maintained that its blockade on food and fuel to Gaza did not pose a major threat to civilian life in the territory, even as the United Nations and other aid agencies have said a famine was looming. But…

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Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Zack Beauchamp writes: Israel’s war in Gaza, which has long been a moral atrocity, is on the brink of becoming unimaginably worse. Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “the concluding moves” of the war in Gaza. Called “Gideon’s Chariots,” the operation’s plan calls for the mass destruction of remaining buildings in Gaza and the “conquest” of much of the Strip by Israel. The more than 2 million Palestinian civilians would…

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Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to take in dozens of white South Africans who were granted refugee status as his administration limits refugee admissions for the rest of the world. A group of 49 Afrikaners claiming to face discrimination and economic hardship in their home country arrived to the U.S. on Monday morning after being awarded an expedited pathway into the country by the Trump administration under a new program established earlier this year. But…

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